[Epic] Admin-specific customizations

[DHowett]

written and maintained by @carlos-zamora & @zadjii-msft

For quite some time now, we've gotten requests for admin-specific customizations. The first being to have an "appearance config" for an elevated session. However, we stopped working on that when we hit the following problem: how do we determine which appearance config to choose when a user is in an elevated session and also has an unfocused appearance config?

Over time, we've gotten more requests with similar situations (not necessarily limited to appearance config). This epic tracks these requests:

• Themes: Suggestion: Enable default theme based on elevation status #8311
• Appearance Config: Conditional settings - i.e. different colors when Administrator #3246
• Dropdown Customization: Allow for custom profiles when running as admin vs user #3637

---

zadjii-msft notes:
Nexus of weird elevate:true bugs:

• Bug with "Open windows from a previous session" and defaults profile run as admin #14932
• Ctrl+clicking on profile in dropdown to open as adminstrator launches it twice (opens two windows), with a random mix of two profiles #13596
• startupActions does not work when "Run this profile as Administrator" is enabled #14442
• startupActions not run when in elevated window #13929
• Clicking shortcut to WT PowerShell profile opens 2 windows #14799
  • Discussion idea that might help here: What if we just restored both the admin and the unelevated one, when we first launch either? So when the terminal relaunches, it immediately brings back the old admin state. Then, launching a new admin profile will just work as expected - either an old admin window exists (whatever, that's fine) or it doesn't (that's fine too)
  • Trick would be clearing out the old admin state IF there's an unelevated window still hanging around (and I'm not sure admin can find that out)

---

User stories

• I want the Terminal to have a different set of profiles in the dropdown when running elevated (vs regularly)
• I want a different defaultProfile when running elevated
• I want to use a different profile.defaults block when running elevated
• I want a profile to have a different appearance when running elevated
• I want the Terminal itself to have a different theme when running elevated

Open questions

• Is this prone to a combinatiorial explosion of situational settings? YES IT IS
  • Would there ever be a case for like, {container}DefaultProfile? (like UWP? this is an intentionally dumb example)
  • How would (focused, unfocused) x (elevated, unelevated) appearances work? That's already 4 different states.
  • (focused, unfocused) x (elevated, unelevated) x (light, dark) x (readonly, not) _{Lock-Symbol for read-only panes #16554}
• Should these all be in the base settings file, or a separate settings file?
  • IE, should we have
    • elevatedTheme, elevatedDefaultProfile, profiles.elevatedDefaults OR
    • admin-settings.json
  • Should there be a entirely separate globals block for elevated settings, ala Add per-window-name global settings #9992?

---

Other Admin QoL issues

• Run this Profile as Admin starts Windows Powershell instead of Powershell7 #15391 "Run as Admin" (where the admin account != your current user account) uses the settings from the admin account, not your own.
• Launch elevated Terminal profile without a keyboard #14517
• Give administrator privileges to tab #12985
• Add "Run As Administrator" menu option to Start Menu and Taskbar #4459
• Starting Windows Terminal with Win+X should lead to a different default profile #13284

[carlos-zamora]

We definitely need a spec for this. One fairly extreme idea I had was to introduce an admin-settings.json.

• if admin-settings.json exists, load that. Otherwise, use settings.json.
• settings UI modifies the loaded JSON
• when "import JSON" is eventually a feature in the settings UI, it'll be easier to migrate settings from one settings.json to another

I'm down for a more clever solution, but it seems like users want a completely customizable experience between their elevated prompt and non-elevated prompt. So might as well enable that experience? Especially since loading a different JSON would be trivial.